by Ann Hood
Lucy’s mother says, “She was the one wearing blue jeans, right? Can you imagine? Wearing jeans on Donahue?”
Lucy walks away from them. She circles the crowded living room. Nothing in it has changed since she was a child. The aqua Danish furniture is the same, the bleached wood end tables, the lampshades with racing covered wagons. Above the fireplace are her mother’s Lladro statues, expensive porcelain cased in glass. Lucy buys them for her in Europe. She knows that every Saturday her mother opens the case and dusts each figurine carefully. The little girl with a basket of kittens. The bride and groom. The three nuns. The geese.
“We’re still fighting about it,” Jackie is saying. “I want Justin James and Jimmy wants Jeremy Justin.”
“All J’s,” another pregnant woman whom Lucy doesn’t recognize says. “That’s cute.”
Lucy wanders the hallway. She peeks into the bathroom. Her mother has hung out the mauve monogrammed towels that she uses for company. She passes her brother Keith’s room and goes inside. It is the room of a teenager—posters of scantily clad women hang beside pictures of Ted Williams and Yaz. She sits on his twin bed. The brown corduroy spread is wearing thin. Keith went to Georgetown for college and never came back to Massachusetts again, except for Christmases. Now, he lives in St. Louis and works for Budweiser. He sends Lucy short notes on postcards of Clydesdale horses. For her birthday he sends her a case of Bud Light.
She supposes her mother feels odd here too. The only one whose children have left town and moved to cities, who haven’t married or given her grandchildren. Her mother smiles when people ask her about that. She makes excuses. But Lucy knows she wishes it were different.
Her mother pokes her head in the doorway. Her hair is still brown. None of the women her age are gray. They go to the beauty parlor once a week to have their hair washed and dyed, set and sprayed.
“What are you doing in here?” she asks.
The rules are you stay in the party room. Lucy knows that. She knows too that this embarrasses her mother.
“Rhoda thinks you’re upset,” her mother adds.
“I just drove three and a half hours,” Lucy says. “I need a rest.”
“Now?”
Lucy sighs. “I’ll go back in there.”
Her mother’s face relaxes. It is smooth and unlined, an attribute she credits to Oil of Olay. She used to write to them, hoping she’d be in one of their ads. But all she got were notes of thanks and coupons for discounts on the product.
Thinking of this, and of her mother spending Saturday mornings dusting those figurines, touches Lucy and she gets up and hugs her.
“How are things with Jasper?” her mother asks her.
“They’re not,” Lucy says.
Her mother nods. “I know you’re upset, Lu, but it’s for the best. You need a man who can take care of you.”
Lucy sighs. “I can take care of myself.”
“That’s not right,” her mother says sadly. “Look how Daddy takes care of me. That’s what you need.”
“Come on,” Lucy says. “Let’s go back to the party.”
“What did you get her?”
“A Snugli. Like you told me.”
Her mother squeezes her waist. “Good girl,” she says.
Lucy is asleep, surrounded by her childhood dolls and stuffed animals, when her mother comes into her room the next morning.
“Honey,” her mother says, shaking her arm lightly. “There’s a man on the phone for you. He sounds very important.”
Lucy opens her eyes and struggles to orient herself. There is the Gone with the Wind poster of Clark Gable staring into Vivien Leigh’s eyes while Atlanta burns behind them. There is the bureau top covered with old cosmetics and atomizers. The bookshelf lined with adolescent books—Joy in the Morning, Marjorie Morningstar, Mr. and Mrs. Bojo Jones. And there is her mother leaning over her, dressed in a quilted pink bathrobe, a curl on either side of her face held down with hair tape.
“Mom,” Lucy says, sitting up. “What?”
Her mother shrugs. “Some man needs to talk to you.”
Lucy gets out of bed and her mother’s eyes widen. “No pajamas? No nothing?”
Lucy frowns and reaches for her old worn terry-cloth robe.
“We will go to Pittsfield today and get you a nightgown, young lady,” her mother says.
“I don’t want to go to Pittsfield,” Lucy says, following her mother to the telephone.
It is an old black rotary dial phone, and Lucy is surprised by its weight, how heavy it feels in her hand. When she was younger, they had a party line, and she would pick up this phone and listen in on strangers’ conversations.
“Hello?” she says.
“Hey, doll,” Nathaniel Jones says. “Four-one-three? You’re right down the Mass Pike from me and you don’t let me know? I have to hear it on your answering machine?”
Lucy shrugs as if he can see her.
“How about I drive there and we go to dinner? You ever been to Wheatleigh’s? It’s amazing.”
“No,” Lucy says. “I’m here visiting.”
“I can be there in no time,” Nathaniel says.
“I don’t think so,” she says.
Her mother is standing in the doorway, watching. Lucy turns away from her. There is light blue confetti on the rug, like icing on a birthday cake.
“You have to celebrate,” he says.
“I do?’
“Inside scoop, babe. My Dolly sold to Calico. They want you to do clothes. A boy version. A sister. Coloring books. The works. Your agent will call you on Monday.”
Lucy feels her heart pick up, start to race slightly. “Are you sure?”
Nathaniel laughs. “What do you think?”
“I don’t believe it,” she says. Her voice barely comes out.
“Don’t faint on me, babe.” He is laughing softly.
Nathaniel Jones, Lucy thinks, has a very sexy laugh.
“I’m glad I got to tell you,” he says. “I wish I could see your beautiful face right now.”
Lucy touches her tangled hair, her old bathrobe, and smiles.
“So what do you say?” he asks her.
“Let’s wait until I hear it officially,” she says. “Then I promise we’ll celebrate.”
It’s difficult to say no to Nathaniel Jones, but when Lucy finally manages to hang up, she turns to her mother again. Her father is there too, in a flannel shirt and stiff Levis. They are waiting.
“I think,” she says slowly, “that I made it.” Her mind is racing as fast as her heart now. No more Whirlwind Weekends, she thinks. No more unpaid MasterCard bills.
“What?” her mother says. “Was that Jasper? It didn’t sound like Jasper.”
“My Dolly,” Lucy says.
“What?” her mother says again. “That drawing you did?”
Lucy takes a deep breath. “Wow,” she says. “Wow.”
Something old
MERYL KING HAS WONDERFUL news for Katherine. She stands there, flushed and excited in her Italian suede pumps and Donna Karan outfit.
“Bianca is moving out!” Meryl practically screams. “She’s going to live in Alaska!”
Katherine smiles, unsure of why this news is so great. “Alaska,” she says. “Well.”
Meryl leans toward her in a cloud of Carolina Herrera perfume. “Katherine, darling, sweetheart. This means you get her bedroom. All we have to do is find someone to take your place on the couch!”
Katherine feels her smile freeze. “Well,” she says again.
“She says her move has nothing to do with those Alaska men who are always on TV looking for wives,” Meryl says, lowering her voice as if Bianca could hear them, even though Bianca is not at home. “She says she went to this kind of psychic who takes a world map and draws these grids on it. Every person has a different reading, and certain points indicate bad environments and others are good environments. Bianca says New York came out her worst place to live. Along with Columbus, Ohio, and Lenin
grad. Alaska is numero uno.”
“That’s amazing,” Katherine says.
Meryl tosses her head back and laughs. “She thinks I don’t know she’s been writing to one of those guys. I see the letters with the Alaska postmark. Can you imagine moving all the way to Alaska just to get married?”
Katherine sees something in Meryl’s eyes. Something that tells her Meryl would indeed move to Alaska, or Columbus, or Leningrad, to get married.
“Maybe we should write to those men,” Katherine says softly.
“Right,” Meryl says.
Katherine walks over to Bianca’s room and looks inside. It’s a small room, a room that Bianca refers to as her space. Now, Katherine thinks, this will be her space. She shivers.
“Remember Leslie Walker?’ Meryl is saying. “Her little sister Laurie is moving to New York in the spring. She pledged after we graduated. Plus, she’s a nurse and will probably work weekends and stuff, which is great.”
Katherine nods, not really listening. Bianca has painted the room a muddy lilac. She has also painted a rainbow on the closet door.
Meryl peeks over her shoulder. “Remember our motto?”
“No.”
Meryl slaps her on the back. “If you said that to one of the sisters when we were pledges, they’d have you doing push-ups on the lawn at Phi Sig.”
“After the rain, the rainbow,” Katherine says.
“I painted that rainbow on the closet door when I had this room,” Meryl says proudly. “It made me feel less lonely.”
“Do you think we can find someone else?” Katherine says, turning away from the room. “Someone besides Leslie Walker’s sister?”
Meryl looks surprised. “Are you kidding?” she says.
Katherine tries to smile. She remembers Leslie Walker as one of the party girls. She used to get drunk and sleep in her car in parking lots of bars in town. Time to get the Walkman, people used to say on Sunday mornings, and a posse would go out to find her and bring her back. They used to tell her she had done crazy things like dance topless on a tabletop or kiss someone nerdy. She always believed them too. Katherine tries to convince herself that a nurse wouldn’t be that bad. She and Shannon aren’t exactly alike. Sisters aren’t always the same. But still, she doesn’t want to live with Leslie Walker’s sister.
“Leslie’s married,” Meryl is saying. “She lives in Pennsylvania. She married that bartender from Willows. Remember him?”
Katherine wants to go somewhere to hide from Meryl, but her bedroom is still the living room, and there is nowhere else to go.
Katherine has started to tell everyone how wonderful Spencer is. She brags about his cooking, about the sweet things he does to surprise her. She has even made him handsome. Somehow, this seems almost true to her. She is embarrassed that sex can make her see him so differently.
Lucy, however, keeps asking her about the other things.
“I thought he had no class,” Lucy says, frowning. “I thought he worshiped Elvis Presley.”
“He likes Elvis Presley,” Katherine tells her. “Just like you like David Byrne.”
Lucy doesn’t buy any of it. And Katherine can almost read her mind—she thinks she will do anything just to have a boyfriend, to have someone to love. What bothers Katherine is her own fear that Lucy may be right.
At night, Katherine reminds herself of all the things that are wrong with Spencer. The things that used to make her cringe. The new things that should be bothering her now, like the way he refuses to talk about serious things. Or the way he still sends her off alone to the subway on mornings after she has stayed at his apartment. Or the fact that during Easter vacation, he is going to drive to Graceland. But none of it matters when they are alone and the lights are out. She wonders if Andy is experiencing things like this with Shelly, the ophthalmologist.
To everyone at PS 15, she and Spencer are an item. His class always giggles when they see her. In school, when she is bringing her first-graders inside from recess and she passes Spencer’s class on its way out, Katherine blushes, thinking about what they do together. She tries to remember all the things that are wrong with him, to remind herself why he’s all wrong for her. She sees his round boyish face. Those dumb blue suede shoes that he wears more and more. But all she can think of is his mouth and tongue. Then the other things fade completely away.
Katherine dials Andy’s number in Boston. He is living in an apartment in the North End. It’s a renovated warehouse, with a glass elevator and a doorman. His apartment is a duplex, with a bath and a half. He can walk to Faneuil Hall, to the Aquarium, to the subway. Boston, he tells her, is heaven.
She has not been able to reach him for days. But finally, tonight, he answers.
“I was worried about you,” Katherine tells him.
“Why?”
His voice is full of accusation. Katherine fills in the blanks. You weren’t worried when you left me at the altar, he is thinking.
“Because I’ve been calling you for three days,” she says.
“Oh. I was in Maine.”
“Maine?” Katherine says.
“Ogunquit.”
Katherine and Andy used to go there for romantic weekends. They had a routine—a bed and breakfast by the ocean, a special stretch of beach to walk on, a place for lobsters, a place for ice cream.
“It’s always nice there in March,” she says.
“Mmmmm,” he says. “It is. Anyway, what can I do for you?”
“Did you….” Katherine hesitates, tries to adjust her voice to a tone of mild curiosity. “Did you go there with Shelly?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Yes,” he says.
“You took Shelly to our place?”
“Katherine,” Andy says, sighing. “It’s not ‘our place’ anymore.”
“I guess not,” she says. “Now it’s yours and Shelly’s.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Fine,” she says finally. “I want some of the furniture. I’m moving into another room and there’s nothing in it.”
“I don’t know—”
“And I need it before Easter,” she continues, talking quickly now, “because I’m going to Memphis that week and I’d like to be settled before I leave.” Her lie comes out easily. Hell, she thinks, maybe I will go with Spencer.
“Memphis?” he says.
“Yes.”
“Tennessee V
“Yes, Andy. Memphis, Tennessee.”
Andy starts to laugh. “What are you going to do?” he says. “Visit Graceland?” He laughs even harder. “I’m sorry,” he adds. “I’m just joking.”
Katherine says, “Very funny.”
Andy calls Katherine again the very next day from the hospital. She can hear the familiar sounds of doctors being paged, bells ringing, people rushing past. Those sounds used to be a big part of her life, and she strains to hear them better. She almost wants Andy to stop talking, so she can forget for a minute how different everything is now, but he is in a hurry.
“I’ll bring the stuff next weekend,” he says. “The sleigh bed, a bureau, and what else?”
She tries to think, but her mind feels muddled.
“One of the quilts,” she says. “Any one.”
“I’m going to rent a U-Haul,” he tells her. “Shelly is picking stuff up at her parents’ place on the Island so I’ll drop your stuff off and then pick her stuff up.”
Katherine says, “Shelly again?”
“If you think of anything else,” he says.
She doesn’t want to hang up. She hears him being paged, hears a loud beeping sound.
“That’s me,” he says. “Bye.”
“Wait,” Katherine says. But the connection is already broken.
It is Friday night and she and Spencer are at Mama Rose’s Italian Garden. Katherine picks at her veal Parmesan. The meat is too heavily breaded, the sauce too sweet, like bottled sauces.
“The food here isn’t good,” she tells Spencer. “Do you know that?”
&nb
sp; “What’s wrong with you?” he says. He leans back in his chair to get a better look at her.
“It’s not me. It’s the food here.”
“We came here on our first date,” Spencer says. His voice is quiet and firm, as if that is the only thing that matters.
Katherine doesn’t look at him. She twirls some spaghetti around and around her fork. She thinks about Andy and their first date. They went to see a duo called Aztec Two Step in Edward’s Auditorium in college. He smuggled a bottle of wine in a paper bag. She was so nervous, so excited, that she can’t remember any of the songs the band sang. It was Andy who chose one of their songs to be played at their wedding.
Spencer pushes his chair closer to the table.
“Is this about Andy again?” he asks.
“This,” Katherine says, “is about the quality of the food here.” She pounds the table lightly. “At this restaurant.”
He glances around. “Calm down,” he says.
At noon tomorrow, Andy will appear at Katherine’s apartment. He will have the things she asked for. She wonders if Shelly will wait for him in the rented U-Haul. Or if he will come alone. She wonders how he will look, what he will say when he sees her.
Spencer’s face has fallen. He looks frightened, as if he is about to go into battle.
Katherine reaches over and takes his hand in hers. “Hey,” she says. “Do you want some company when you go to Memphis?”
He doesn’t seem to trust the question, to trust her.
“Why?”
“I’ve never been there. I’ve never been to the south at all,” Katherine says. “Unless you count Florida.”
“Would you like to see Graceland?” he asks.
Now he is softening, his face is open and eager. Katherine can’t help thinking of a puppy, a cocker spaniel or golden retriever. She thinks too of Andy laughing on the telephone about this very thing. It is silly, she tells herself. Going to Graceland is silly.
But she tells Spencer, “Maybe.”
Andy holds the American flag quilt in his hands. It is navy blue, with small flags patched haphazardly across it. When she sees him on her doorstep, holding something they bought together in Vermont last year, Katherine does not get all weak-kneed and weepy the way she had anticipated. Instead, she feels calm. And being beside Andy after all this time is not exciting, but normal somehow.